Gdańsk in aerial photography
from the interwar period

Authors:
Wojciech Szymański, Ewa Barylewska-Szymańska, Thomas Urban (text)


31,0 x 24,0 cm, 128 pages,
113 photographs,
hardback with a wrapper,
versions: English, German, Polish

The set of 4475 oblique aerial photographs showing, with a few exceptions, the area of former Prussian provinces: Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia and the Gdańsk Free State, as well as some towns of former Brandenburg on the eastern bank of the Odra is one of the most important collections of the pictorial archive of the Herder Institute in Marburg. The pictures were taken in the 1920’s and ‘30’s, and were purchased by the Herder Institute from Hansa Luftbild in 1967/1968.
Out of a total of 228 oblique aerial photographs covering the territory of the Danzig Free City (Freie Stadt Danzig) preserved in the Herder Institute Marburg the book offers a wide selection of 113 images. These images exemplify the scale and course of the commercial photographic campaign, which involved photo flights, all of them but a few made in 1929, over the city of Danzig/Gdańsk and its suburbs, the harbour and the seaside resorts Zoppot/Sopot, Brösen/Brzeźno, Heubude/Stogi and Glettkau/Jelitkowo as well as the sites of several hydro-electric power plants.
Numerous aerial shots of Gdańsk’s urban area give us an idea of the magnificence of the Old Town’s architectural complex for the last time before it was destroyed at the end of WWII, and then rebuilt.
The entire collection of oblique aerial photography can be viewed in the illustrated database (Bildkatalog) on Herder Institute’s website (www.herder-institut.de).

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